Essay on poetry and unreality by Plato.

This has to do with Plato's decision to banish all the poets and creative artists from his ideal republic, as stated in his book The Republic. The reason for this is Plato's disbelief in the truth value of poetry. His is a philosophical critique of poetry. It is also an ironic acknowledgement of its power. Plato's basic philosophical position about the real is that it is the idea and not the object, which is real. The noumenal is the real and not the phenomenal. Thus with every work of poetic or artistic representation, the real is pushed off further. Thus, an artwork that represents the object, a copy of the real, is twice away from reality. It is at the third remove from the real. Therefore, the poetic craft is grounded in unreality. Plato's example is that of the bed. The real bed is the idea of the bed, as it exists in the mind of God and what the painter paints is a copy of the copy i.e. the bed he sees in the world of objects around him.